Key Points

  • The Alabama Supreme Court granted BMSS LLC's mandamus petition and directed the Jefferson Circuit Court to transfer Warren Averett's tortious-interference suit to the Mobile Circuit Court.
  • Mobile County is a proper venue under Ala. Code § 6-3-7 because BMSS's alleged interference with Warren Averett's employee contracts and client relationships substantially occurred there.
  • The interest of justice under § 6-3-21.1 required transfer because Jefferson County has little, if any, connection to the dispute, and the injury for venue purposes is the defendant's wrongful act, not the plaintiff's loss at its headquarters.
  • Any connection between the litigation and Shelby County, where BMSS is based, cannot be imputed to neighboring Jefferson County.
  • A pending declaratory-judgment action in Mobile Circuit Court over the same restrictive covenants weighed in favor of transfer to avoid duplicative litigation and inconsistent judgments.

The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday ordered that an accounting firm's lawsuit accusing a competitor of luring away six of its employees and several of its clients be moved from Jefferson County to Mobile County. The court held that the county where the suing firm has its headquarters has almost no connection to the dispute.

Writing for the court, Justice Parker granted BMSS LLC's petition for a writ of mandamus, an extraordinary order directing a lower court to take a specific action. The court instructed the Jefferson Circuit Court to vacate its order refusing to transfer the case and to send it to the Mobile Circuit Court. Chief Justice Stewart and Justices Shaw, Wise, Bryan, Sellers, Cook and McCool concurred, and Justice Mendheim recused himself.

The ruling sends Warren Averett Companies LLC's claims to the court where the six former employees are already challenging the contract restrictions that BMSS allegedly induced them to break. The court held that for venue purposes, the injury in an interference case is the defendant's conduct, not the loss the plaintiff feels at its headquarters, and that a pending suit over the same contracts weighs toward transfer.

Warren Averett once kept a Mobile office where Phillip Rivers worked as a supervising partner. In 2024 the firm closed that office, moved its personnel to Daphne and then fired Rivers, who took a job with BMSS in Mobile. Six more Warren Averett employees, all bound by contracts with noncompete and confidentiality clauses, soon followed Rivers, and several clients moved their business to BMSS.

Two lawsuits followed in early 2025. Rivers and the other former employees sued Warren Averett in Mobile Circuit Court, seeking a declaration that the restrictive covenants in their contracts are void and unenforceable, and that case remains pending. Warren Averett sued BMSS in Jefferson Circuit Court, alleging six counts of tortious interference with contractual relations and one count of tortious interference with business relations.

BMSS asked the Jefferson court to transfer the case under Alabama's forum non conveniens, or inconvenient-forum, statute, which requires a change of venue "for the convenience of the parties and witnesses" or "in the interest of justice." The trial court heard oral arguments and denied the motion.

Parker acknowledged that a plaintiff's choice of a proper forum ordinarily receives "great deference," but wrote that the statute requires transfer if either ground is met. The court rested on the interest of justice and did not reach convenience.

The court first found that Mobile County was itself a proper venue. Under the statute governing suits against corporate defendants, venue lies where a "substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred." BMSS hired the former employees to work in its Mobile office, and Warren Averett's own verified complaint alleged that they now work in "the same geographic territory in which" they "previously worked for Warren Averett." Rivers stated that "[most] of these corporate clients and their staff, as well as individual clients, reside or are based in Mobile," or within an hour's drive of the city.

"Jefferson County has little, if any, connection with this litigation," Parker wrote. Warren Averett is headquartered there and BMSS does business there, but the court found neither fact related to the dispute. None of the six employees ever worked in Jefferson County, BMSS president Don Murphy said no one at the firm's office there took part in recruiting them, and Rivers testified that none of his client communications occurred there.

Warren Averett had pointed to Shelby County, where BMSS has its principal place of business and where Murphy lives and works. "But regardless of any connection between this litigation and Shelby County, it cannot be imputed to Jefferson County," Parker wrote, merely because the two counties are neighbors. The analysis "might be different," the court added, had the suit been filed in Shelby County.

Parker also wrote that the distance between the Jefferson County courthouse and likely witnesses around Mobile "likely prevents the use of compulsory process," because state rules let a trial court quash a subpoena requiring a nonparty to travel more than 100 miles.

On the location of the injury, which the court has called "the foremost factor in the interest-of-justice analysis," Parker quoted earlier precedent: "in venue cases, the word injury commonly refers not to the damage allegedly suffered by the plaintiff, but to the wrongful act or omission allegedly committed by the defendant." The opinion likened the case to legal malpractice suits, which look to where the law firm did the work, and libel suits, where the injury occurs where the statement is made. Any interference here, the court held, occurred at BMSS's Mobile office.

The Jefferson Circuit Court had itself observed that Warren Averett's claims rest on the enforceability of the restrictive covenants, and that a ruling voiding them would make the case "extremely difficult" to prove. Even so, Parker wrote, that court "ignored the role that parallel litigation should play in the interest-of-justice analysis." After transfer, the opinion said, the Mobile court "will be able to make a single decision regarding those restrictive covenants that will apply to both lawsuits," with less repetitive testimony and less risk of inconsistent judgments.

"Mobile County thus has a strong connection to this case while Jefferson County has little, if any, connection," the court concluded. It held that the trial court exceeded its discretion by treating BMSS's general business activity in Jefferson County as a reason to keep the case there.

The opinion decided only where the case will be heard. "But the specifics of this case are not before us," Parker wrote. Under the writ, the Jefferson Circuit Court must vacate its denial and enter a new order transferring the action to the Mobile Circuit Court, where the former employees' challenge to their contracts is still pending.